Quantum Eternity: Ultracold Atoms Edge Closer to
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- Philip Anderson proposed in 1958 that disorder in a crystal could trap an electron in a frozen quantum state, winning a share of the 1977 Nobel prize in physics for the theoretical foundation of what became known as many-body localization (MBL).
- Denis Basko, Igor Aleiner and Boris Altshuler proved mathematically in 2006 that adding disorder to a conducting material could trap electrons and transform the conductor into an electrical insulator — the first serious theoretical case that MBL might really exist.
- Wojciech De Roeck and François Huveneers identified 'thermal avalanches' in 2018, showing that unusually neat patches in a disordered material can feed energy into frozen regions and rapidly destroy MBL, casting doubt on whether it survives at large scales.
- Nicolas LaFlorencie, Fabien Alet and Jeanne Colbois at the University of Toulouse identified in 2024 a second threat — 'resonances,' in which a localized material stumbles onto an alternative arrangement of identical energy that undermines the frozen state over time.
- Junhyeok Hur and colleagues at KAIST reported a 2025 experiment using ultracold atoms in arrays as large as a 24-by-24 grid — beyond the roughly two-dozen-particle limit of cutting-edge computer simulations — finding that quasi-periodic (structured) disorder held MBL stable as systems grew, while random disorder required ever-stronger disorder to localize.
- Achieving a true MBL would unlock a new class of phases of matter, including time crystals originally envisaged by Frank Wilczek in 2012, with potential applications in quantum information storage and super-precise clocks.
Why it matters: A genuine many-body localization state would deliver a phase of matter that defies thermodynamics at macroscopic scales — the foundation for time crystals, quantum memory and ultra-precise clocks. The 2025 KAIST result is the first real-atom experiment to test MBL beyond the reach of simulation, and its finding that structured disorder stabilizes localization gives researchers a concrete design knob rather than a purely theoretical target.
